Mass Effect vs Doug E Adams: The N7's Guide To The Galaxy
by jerseydanielgibson
Summary: Seconds before Earth is vacated to turn the planet into a galactic resort, Jersey is plucked off the planet by his friend Jane Shepard, carrying The N7's Guide to the Galaxy, who for the last eight months has been trying to figure out a way to get back home a hundred and seventy years into the future and the search for the ultimate answer... Keep Calm And N7 On! (First Of Its Kind)
1. 0: Keep Calm

**Chapter 1: KEEP CALM**

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Disclaimer: BioWare owns Mass Effect. Pan Books owns the rights to Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, written by Douglas Adams.

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 _Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun._

 _Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly cute little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think Windows-based OS Systems are a pretty neat idea._

 _This planet has - or rather, had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much most of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the going-ons of other unhappy people on online social networking services, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the online social networking services that were unhappy._

 _And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, especially the ones with Windows-based OS Systems._

 _Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever had left the oceans._

 _And then, one Tuesday, over two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small coffee-franchise cafe in American Pacific Northwest suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything._

 _Sadly, however, before she could get internet access on her fruit-named tablet to post it on online social networking services, a terrible, stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost forever._

 _This is not her story._

 _But it is the story of that terrible, stupid catastrophe and some of its consequences._

 _It is also the story of a book, a book called_ The N7's Guide to the Galaxy _\- not an Earth book, never published on Earth, and until the terrible catastrophe occurred, never seen or even heard of by any Earthmen._

 _Nevertheless, a wholly remarkable book._

 _In fact, it was probably the most remarkable book ever to come out of the great publishing corporation of_ ICT _\- of which no Earthman had ever heard of either._

 _Not only is it a wholly remarkable book, it is also a highly successful one - more popular than the_ Thessian Home Care Omnibus _, better selling that_ Fifty-three More Things to Do while Stuck on Tuchanka _, and more controversial than Ashana T'vara's trilogy of philosophical blockbusters,_ Where the Goddess Went Wrong, Some More of the Goddess's Greatest Mistakes, _and_ Who Is This Goddess Person Anyway?

 _In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the_ N7's Guide _has already supplanted the great Encyclopedia Salariana as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects._

 _First, it is slightly cheaper, and second, it has the words_ Keep Calm and N7 On! _inscribed in large friendly letters on its back cover._

 _But the story of this terrible, stupid Tuesday, the story of its extraordinary consequences, and the story of how these consequences are inextricably intertwined with this remarkable book begins very simply._

 _It starts with a hangover._


	2. 1: It Starts With A Hangover

**Chapter 2: It Starts With A Hangover**

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Disclaimer: BioWare owns Mass Effect. Pan Books owns the rights to Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, written by Douglas Adams.

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 **Milky Way Galaxy, Local Cluster, Sol System, Earth, North American Continent, State of Washington, Tacoma, April 11, 2013**

The apartment stood on the perimeter of a grassy courtyard in the southern end of South Tacoma, overlooking the great highway that bisected Pierce County like a concrete river. Not a remarkable apartment by any means - it was about forty years old, cheap, made of brick, and had the unfortunate disadvantage of having a large bay window that faced the setting sun, throwing glare onto the television for a quarter of the day.

The occupant of that apartment was me, but I wasn't currently in it.

I woke up on the lawn in front of my apartment.

The very first thing I was aware of was that I was wet; not an uncommon occurrence in the Pacific Northwest, where it rains for half the year. I'm not exactly soaked, but I am definitely damp, my clothes from the night before having gotten soggy. As I woke up, feeling the wetness of my clothes and how they weighed on me, I found myself looking up at blue skies, a cloudless morning in Washington. This struck me as odd; clear skies in April? My brain took a minute to process this impossibility, shuttered, and then rejected the notion out of sheer lunacy. Then I noticed that there were no less than three people looking down upon my prone body, one a woman, and the other two men.

I groaned as I recognized my land lady, Elana Gonzalez.

Last night came back to me in a blur, fogged with alcohol and anger. I had been at my favorite bar, Rollies, drinking heavily for some reason, intermixed with a lot of shouting and beer. It took me a few moments to remember why as my hangover interrupted my thoughts, my poor brain desperate to ignore the pounding pain that was hammering at my temples, the awful taste in my mouth, and the fact that I was shivering slightly from the damp. The face of my land lady, Ms. Gonzalez, didn't help much. To say that she was a lot of woman was putting it mildly; she could have gotten into a wrestling contest with Rosie O'Donnell and come out the Heavyweight Champion. God or Nature decided that her being fat wasn't enough, and gave a face only a sledgehammer could love; too broad a nose, a few hairy warts, and jiggling jowls to frame an unhealthy complexion and a constant sweating disorder.

She was currently glaring down at me with all her weighty might.

Now I remember why I had gone drinking.

After spending ten years in the United States Army and over fifty accumulated months in the Middle East, I had gotten fed up of having more deployment time than everyone I had ever known, met, or even heard of. Sure, Be All You Can Be and Army Of One sounds like a lot of fun until I realized that I wasn't looking forward to another ten years of doing the same old routine of training, deployment, training, deployment, etc. I had gotten out with the half-assed idea of going to college and using my GI Bill to all its three year glory to avoid being a working stiff for a little longer. One Honorable Discharge later, I'm filing for Unemployment through the State of Washington, and getting six months of Worksource pay to 'find a job'.

That six months ended eight months ago.

Like most who have gotten out of the service, I found myself sinking deeper into depression. Didn't look for jobs, didn't apply for college, spent most of my time moping, drinking, and hating the fact that I had no idea what to do. I realized that all my Army skills had taught me one thing; how to be a soldier. But when it came to the civilian workforce, I realized that I would be at the bottom of the barrel along with recent high school graduates and everyone else that pretty much made rotten decisions in their life. The Unemployment ran out, and I found myself doing interesting things to make ends meet; letting the bills pile while selling stuff to make money for food and beer. Angry at myself and practically everyone else, I had come home yesterday to find a big heavy-duty padlock on my door, the kind you see on show homes in new suburbs, and an eviction notice taped to my front door. In my infinite wisdom, I had yelled and screamed at the door, pissed that I was now homeless, and had gone to Rollies, only a five minute drive from my apartment, and about a thirty minute walk. One long night of drinking later, I had stumbled back home and put a brick through the front window to grab the one thing I had really wanted out of my apartment, what had been denied to me because of the padlock and the eviction notice. I had spent good money on it, and I wasn't about to let it go to waste.

Said item was wrapped in a towel, held together by duct tape to disguise its contents, laying next to me.

"Mr. Gibson," Ms. Gonzalez began, her _Latino_ -accented voice filled with as much scorn as possible as she addressed me, "you have been evicted from the premise. Now I come to find you out here on the lawn, and the front window smashed." I grunted at that; way too hungover to argue. I'm now noticing that the two men flanking her were big, burly _Latino_ men, just as big as she, just as ugly, and just as mean. Uh oh. "What do you have to say for yourself?"

"I think I threw my shoulder out chucking that brick." I monologued. Perhaps not my greatest moment.

"This is coming out of your security deposit!" The woman screeched like a harpy, in that way that women did who believed that the louder you were, the more right you happened to be. Don't believe me? Argue with a black woman; they'll set you straight real quick. At least my land lady was sticking to English. "Now you have five minutes to leave this apartment complex or I'm going to call the cops on you!"

"Can you send INS, too? I don't have my papers on me." Hungover or not, my wit and charm haven't suffered evidently. Ms. Gonzalez's face is now a very bright red, and she looks like a fat tomato. That got me laughing.

"Hector! Jose! _Tirarlo a cabo en el culo!_ " The harpy screeched again, and I know I'm in deep shit when it's not even in English. I can't even translate sober, but despite my hungover state, I'm pretty sure she just told Tweetle- _Paco_ and Tweetle- _Taco_ to chuck me out. The two burly Mexican men bend down to scoop me up, and I'm pretty sure this is going to hurt.

There's a knock on the door. And someone calling my name.

Man hands stop grabbing at me as I flail about on the ground, lacklusterly preventing from what I know is going to happen, when the sound of a fist on wood stops us from our grab ass, and all four of us look over to see a redhead knocking on my apartment door, obviously oblivious to what is going on. I look to see my best friend knocking on my apartment door, asking for me by name, shouting it out in a vain attempt to be heard through the locked wooden portal.

"Jane! Over here!"

Jane Shepard looks from the door and smiles at my prostrate self, completely ignoring the three people who each separately weigh twice as much as I do surrounding me as she turns from the door and looks at me.

Perhaps I should tell you about her.

I met Jane Shepard at, of course, a bar. About eight months ago. She was a little confused, a little lost, and in my valiant attempt to be a nice guy, decided to ask her if she needed help. I had money at the time, so after several beers and some outrageous lies on both of our parts, I found myself a friend who had the oddest sense of humor and the strangest terminology. Still, she was fun to be with, _very_ easy on the eyes, and absolutely insane when it came to the thought of self-preservation. Who else willingly surfs on the top of a car roaring down the interstate while piloted by a drunk guy _not_ on a dare? And that was just on the first night I met her. She lived in a small trailer in a shitty trailer park down the road, so one of us usually ended up crashing at the others' house more often than not. She didn't have a car, and as far as I was aware, she didn't have a job, either. Of course, she had a tendency to call money 'credits', get into arguments with Airmen, Astrophysicists, and anyone who put money into stocks. She also happened to be really, really good in a barfight. I still remember her using a bar stool like a club on an entire biker gang.

"Jersey! There you are! I've been looking for you!" Jane called out, all smiles as her green eyes lit up, framed by freckles and red hair. Seriously, she could have casted herself into _Celtic Woman_ without much of a fight. "We need to leave."

"I know." I muttered from the ground, my hangover having not gotten any better. "Evicted."

" _You know_?" The red head looked alarmed, looking to the three heavy-set _Latinos_ that surrounded me, and then to me, and then surprisingly, to the sky. The befuddled look upon her face was almost charming as she gaped at me for a good moment, and then she looked to the door of my apartment, seeing the piece of paper taped to it, the big, bold, red letters reading 'EVICTED' for anyone with a pair of eyes to see. "Oh. Yes, that." Jane returned to her smile, the alarm on her face disappearing as if it never happened. "We need to talk, Jersey. It's rather important. We should go." There was that phrase; anytime Jane Shepard left, she never said goodbye. It was always _I should go_. Nothing else. "We're also going to need a drink. A lot of drinks."

My hungover brain rather enjoyed the sound of that.

"Well, it's not like I got anywhere else to go, right?" I muttered, looking to the 'EVICTED' paper, the padlock, the broken front window, and to the three bruisers standing over me. "What about my stuff inside?"

"Wouldn't worry. It won't get very far." Jane assured me with a flip of her hand as she straightened the shirt she was wearing, a plain white t-shirt topping some blue jeans that looked like they came from Goodwill. As I said, she didn't have a job as far as I was aware. "C'mon, Jersey! It's vitally important that we talk and drink, and Rollies is only five minutes down the road. _Now_!" Jane Shepard was being… forceful. Commanding, even. That was a first.

"Jane, what's going on? Is something the matter?" The goons are ignored as I sat up, the towel-wrapped package in my arms, hugged tightly.

"Nothing. Nothing's the matter. Listen, Jersey - I've got to tell you the most important thing you've ever heard in your life. I've got to tell you now, and I've got to tell you at Rollies."

"Okay… and that requires a lot of drinks?"

"Trust me on this one." Jane Shepard said as she folded her arms across her chest. "What I'm about to tell you, you're going to be needing a stiff drink. And we've only got about twenty minutes to do it in."


	3. 2: Alcohol

**Chapter 3: Alcohol**

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Disclaimer: BioWare owns Mass Effect. Pan Books owns the rights to Hitchhicker's Guide To The Galaxy, written by Douglas Adams.

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 **Milky Way Galaxy, Local Cluster, Sol System, Earth, North American Continent, State of Washington, Tacoma, April 11, 2013**

 _Here's what the_ Galactic Council Codex _has to say about alcohol._

 _It says that alcohol is a colorless volatile liquid formed by the fermentation of sugars and also notes its intoxicating effects on certain carbon-based life forms._

The N7's Guide to the Galaxy _also mentions alcohol. It says that the best drink in existence is the_ Vesper Martini _; shake (if you must) with plenty of cracked ice. 3 oz. Tanqueray gin, 1 oz 50% Stolichnaya vodka, ½ oz Lillet Blanc, 1/8 teaspoon (or less) quinine powder or, in desperation, 2 dashes of bitters. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and twist a large swatch of thin-cut lemon peel over the top. Credit goes to Ian Fleming of the Isle of England for the invention of this concoction._

 _Since the release of the_ N7's Guide _, this once literary drink reached far and wide throughout the galaxy, being enjoyed by a plethora of species on several different planets, stations, outposts, and of course, bars. The_ Guide _also informs the reader where the best_ Vespers _are mixed, how much you can expect to pay for one, and what activities are recommended after imbibing such a drink. It is noted that the most popular thing is to 'shoot something evil'._

 _The_ Guide _even tells you how you can mix one yourself._

 _The_ N7's Guide to the Galaxy _sells even better than the_ Galactic Council Codex.

"Six glasses of Guinness," said Jane Shepard to the older female bartender working behind the counter of Rollies. "And quickly please, we're all about to be evicted."

I note that the older female bartender in question, one Lucy, didn't deserve this sort of treatment; she was actually a nice lady. She adjusts her bra through her shirt to exemplify that she does have a rather impressive amount of cleavage and stares at Jane, who ignores Lucy and stares at a television mounted up on the wall in the corner, showing the local KING crew doing the news. Lucy instead looks at me, and I shrug. It's like ten in the morning, the bar just opened up, and we're asking for beer this early in the morning. It should say something when a bartender thinks you've got a problem.

"Nice weather we're having," Lucy begins as she pulls glasses and starts pulling Guinness out of the tap, filling each. "Going to be watching the Season Opener in a bit? Mariners against the Angels."

"No need to." Jane prophesied as she looked from the TV and back to Lucy. "They'll lose." I snort at that. Mariners haven't had a winning season since... well, since Griffey and Ichigo were on the team. That was back when there still were a Twin Towers.

"They could get better this season." Lucy defended, yet another die-hard Seattle fan. Probably a 12 during winter without football to watch. "There's always a chance."

"Not this season." The redhead replied. "We're being evicted."

"Oh, yeah. That." The older woman sniffed, looking at me for a moment, realizing that I'm just as clueless as she, and then Lucy looks back to Jane. "We could hope, right?"

"No, not really." Jane shook her head.

"Six Guinness, as requested." Lucy finally complied, the beer poured. "That'll be $34.95."

"Here's... fifty of these green paper bills." Jane pulls out an impressive wad of cash and dumps it on the bar, a slew of fives and ones wadded up like bad love letters discarded. "Keep the change."

"From fifty dollars?" The bartender is impressed. I am, too. "Thank you, ma'am."

"Spend it all on one place." The redhead recommended. "You've got about eight and a half minutes to do so." Jane looked at her left wrist, where her curious holographic watch was, the red numerical symbols not telling the current time, but a countdown of some sort. Lucy simply looked at Jane oddly and walked away, muttering.

"Jane," I ask, "would you mind and please tell me what the hell is going on?" She was acting stranger than usual, and that was saying quite a bit.

"Bottoms up." The redhead toasted as she picked up the first glass of Guinness and swiftly downed the entirety of its contents in a moment or two rather impressively. She smacked her full lips when she finished and knocked the glass on the bar, the remnants of the foamy head sliding down to the bottom. "You've got three beers to get through in about eight minutes."

"At ten o'clock in the morning?" I love drinking, but that's a step too close to the Twelve Step program, in my mind. "I don't even drink at lunchtime!"

"Time," Jane began philosophically, "is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."

"That's... pretty good." I admitted. "You should post that on Facebook. It's pretty much bottomed out on turning deep quotes into stupid captions."

"Drink up." Jane is already on her second, and I start sipping on my first.

"Any why three Guinness all of a sudden, Jane?"

"Muscle relaxant. You're going to need it." Her voice is losing its usual quirky humor, and there's a tone of command in it. I know that tone, ten years in the Army and all. Hell, I've used it myself on any number of occasions.

"Muscle relaxant." I deadpan. "There are other relaxation methods that don't involve getting drunk in the morning."

"Massage parlor takes too long, and it's too far to walk." Jane's already polished number two, and I'm barely a quarter into my first.

"This has turned out to be a real weird Tuesday." I muttered as I take another pull. "Or has it always been this weird and I've been too oblivious to notice it?"

"Okay," the redhead sighed, turning so that she was facing me and not her last remaining Guinness. "I'm going to explain, now. How long have we known each other, Jersey?"

"Eight months, a week, and three days." I fire off immediately. It's not like I have an impressive talent for time or anything. If you had met Jane Shepard, you'd remember it vividly, too. Redheads with her body were very few and far between, and to say that I wanted to have sex with her was a very mild understatement. Could have ruined it by doing the whole 'walking penis on a life-support system' thing you see most guys do around gorgeous women, so instead I decided that I'd rather be her friend. Think of me what you will, but women like Jane Shepard are too damn rare to ruin on cheap, meaningless one-night stands.

"Okay." The redhead takes a deep breath. "Jersey? What would you say if I told you that I wasn't from Edmonton, Canada? That I was really born on a starship in 2154, about a hundred and thirty years from now, in a solar system known as the Shanxi Expansion Cluster, about twenty-five hundred light years away from the Sol System and the Local Cluster?"

"Um... that you'd be the next Orsen Scott Card or David Drake?" I guessed with some humor in my voice, naming two of my favorite Sci-Fi writers. Jane leveled a stare at me that meant that either my joke fell far too flat or she wasn't appreciating my humor. "Shit, I don't know, Jane. What does one say to something like that that won't involve accusations of insanity and hurt feelings? I mean... 'Shanxi Expansion Cluster'? I don't even know what that is, much less if it's a location or not."

"Just... drink up, Jersey." Jane smiles at me, but it isn't a warm smile or an appreciative one. It's one of those tired smiles that one gets when you've been dealing with an annoying in-law for too long but can't afford to say anything because they're related and you don't want to catch hell. "We're getting evicted." Her attention went to her holographic watch for a moment, and then back to the KING news as she hoisted up her last Guinness.

"Tuesdays." I muttered as I decide to get with the program and drain my first beer. I looked at the lone package that I brought with me, minus my still drying clothes, the bundle that was wrapped in a towel and duct taped together. "How is it that they can be possibly worse than Mondays?"


	4. 3: The Importance Of Having A Hoodie

**Chapter 4: The Importance Of Having A Hoodie**

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Disclaimer: BioWare owns Mass Effect. Pan Books owns the rights to Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, written by Douglas Adams.

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 **Milky Way Galaxy, Local Cluster, Sol System, Earth, North American Continent, State of Washington, Tacoma, April 11, 2013**

On this particular Tuesday, something was moving quietly through the ionosphere many miles above the surface of Earth; several somethings, in fact. Several dozen huge yellow chunky slablike somethings, huge as office blocks, silent as birds. They soared with ease thanks to the properties of Element Zero and an electromagnetic suspension engine that could run either a positive or negative charge through the lengths of the floating structures, either increasing its mass or decreasing it as desired. They positioned themselves, biding their time, grouping. Preparing.

The planet beneath them was almost perfectly oblivious of their presence, which was just how they wanted it for the moment. The huge yellow somethings went completely unnoticed by NORAD, Cape Canaveral, Goonhilly, Jodrell Bank, and Sydney, which was a pity because for half of those locations the somethings were exactly the sort of thing they'd been looking for all these years.

The only thing on the planet called Earth that sensed the yellow somethings, the only device that registered anything at all was on a small black device attached to a pair of Velcro strips, which was currently fastened upon the left wrist of one female named Jane Shepard. The contents of the black device mounted upon her wrist, in which her Earth friend, Jersey, just assumed was a watch with a holographic interface to tell the time, was quite interesting and would have made any of Earth's technological engineers' eyes pop out of their heads, which was why Jane masqueraded her Omnitool as a sort of time-telling device that Earthlings would assume was just a fascinating new watch admist all their other primitive technogarbage like tablets, smartphones, and FitBits. Besides the Omnitool on her wrist, she also had a short-range Eezo-powered telegraphic translation coupler; a short, squat black rod, smooth and matte with a couple of flat switches and dials at one end. She also had a device that suspiciously looked like a tablet, except with no physical LCD screen present, just a frame that could collapse onto itself in to something smaller than an iPhone or Samsung Galaxy. It certainly didn't run off of an Android operating system. The device itself Jane Shepard called a 'datapad', and it surprisingly had no buttons on it, not even an activation toggle, with a holographic screen that could go from four inches square to ten inches square, and could access a million 'pages' at a moments' notice via the Extranet. It was surprisingly simplistic to use despite its futuristic encoding, programming, and capabilities compared to Earth's technology, and it was camouflaged by an interesting velvet cover that would expand with the frame, covering up the back end to disguise the Haptic Display technology from humans, with the words **'KEEP CALM AND N7 ON!'** printed onto it in large, friendly red letters bordered by silver. The other reason Jane had it was because this device was in fact that the most remarkable book amongst remarkable books to have ever been published by ICT, the N7's Guide To The Galaxy. The reason why it was published in the form of a collapsible datapad is that if it were loaded into an Omnitool, it would probably eat up all the processing power on the Omnitool, which was still, sadly, running off a Windows-based OS system.

Besides the Omnitool, the translator and the Guide, all Jane Shepard had on her was a man's wallet containing her biometrically holographic identification card, a stylus, a pack of bubble gum, and six interesting ceramic tubes that she carried in a small messenger bag strapped around her body, she also had a blocky contraption that, when a button was pushed on its side, telescoped into a pistol-like apparatus that she called an N7's Eagle. She had unfortunately lost the Hoodie that had gone with it.

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The N7's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of hoodies.

 _A hoodie,_ it says _, is about the most massively useful thing an N7 could have. Partly because it has great practical value. You can wear it on you for warmth as you pound on one of the access doors to the Corporate Spaceport on Noveria in the Horsehead Nebula. You can lie on it on the brilliant sugar-fine sandy beaches of Virmire, inhaling the loamy smells of the crashing surf. You can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Intan'sai of the Phoenix System in Argos Rho. Use it as a makeshift sail on a miniraft down the slow rivers of Eden Prime. Wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat. Wrap it around your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of Varren (a mind-boggling stupid critter from Tuchanka that assumes that if you can't see it, that it is invisible and in no danger whatsoever... dumb as a Vorcha, but still a dangerous critter). You can wave it in emergencies like a distress signal, wrap it around bars and twist it to widen said bars to escape jails and prisons Jackie Chan-style, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough._

 _More importantly, a hoodie has immense psychological value to those who live in the galaxy at large. For some reason, if a bosh'tet (_ bosh'tet _, Quarian word for_ void head _, but also non-N7's) discovers that a N7 has a hoodie with or on him or herself, they will automatically assume that said N7 is also in possession of a weapon, a blade, explosives, hacking apparatus, hard suit, armor, survival gear, up to and including a low-yield tactical nuclear device. Furthermore, the bosh'tet will then happily lend the N7 Credits to purchase any of the aforementioned items that the N7 might have in a fit of desperation and self-preservation so said N7 can scurry along and bother somebody else. What the bosh'tet will think is that any human man or woman wearing a hoodie is an N7, has traveled the length and breadth of the Galaxy, roughing it, slumming it, struggling against terrible odds, has won their way through and still has their hoodie, is clearly a person not to be fucked with._

 _Hence the phrase that has passed into N7 lingo,_ quad _, in the vernacular of the Krogan. For a species that happens to possess four separate testicles that can birth hundreds of ill-tempered children possessing wide mouths and sharp teeth, anyone else said to possess a 'quad' is a compliment indeed._

* * *

Nestling quietly on top of Jane Shepard's left wrist, the Omnitool enters into the last five minutes of its countdown, blinking in warning. Miles above the surface of the planet the huge yellow somethings begin to fan out. At NORAD, a radar specialist contemplates a trip to the local bathroom for some 'personal entertainment and relaxation' time with a recent issue of Playboy.

* * *

"You got your hoodie with you." Jane says suddenly to me as I work on my second stout of Guinness, about halfway done. She's already quaffed all three of hers. "Good. Good man. Man should always know where his hoodie is." I'm wearing my brown Carhartt hoodie, one piece with no zipper, a full joey pouch on the front, and deep hood that I can actually drape over my eyes if I want a little shuteye. She frowned, looking down at her own t-shirt-covered torso, the white cloth mapping the curves of her body more than well enough, clicking her tongue in irritation. "Haven't been able to replace mine."

"That reminds me." I set down my now-empty second glass of beer, fighting the urge to burp, and grab my package that I had laid on the bar next to me, the white towel and duct tape rather conspicuous to anyone that would give a damn. I pick it up and hand it to her, the weight of the contents probably less than a pound all together. "Happy birthday, Jane."

"You... you remembered?" The redhead looked surprised as she looks at the towel-wrapped package. She had told me when her birthday was months ago, only mentioning it once in a fit of a drunken haze that her birthday was April Eleventh. Somehow, even in my inebriated state at the time, I had remembered it well enough to have jotted it down on a hanging calender to remind myself of the event. I hadn't kept up with any of my Army buddies since getting out, especially since the decision of getting out turned out to be a disaster, and Jane Shepard was probably now my only friend. Buying her a birthday present hadn't been easy since I was pretty much broke, had little left in my name to sell for money, and was generally being a bum about it. Still, I had found a way to get something I know she would like. She had been complaining about a lost item for months, lamenting about its disappearance, and she had described it to me several times. Getting it made had cost me a pretty penny, but I had gone to a custom shop with a piece of paper and a drawing of the configurations desired. I had also selected the best base model I could find for the design, not resigning myself to getting some cheap bullshit for my best friend. It had cost me one hundred and seventy-four dollars after Washington State rape sales taxes, and result had turned out beautiful; exactly the way I pictured it. I had walked two hours to the custom shop to place the order, waited two weeks for the result, and walked there to pick it up with almost the very last of my money just yesterday. The towel and duct tape had come from a local Goodwill along the way because, for some reason, I had no idea how to wrap paper around fabric without it ripping to pieces.

Seeing Jane smile as she accepted the towel-wrapped gift was worth it. Especially as she yanked off the duct tape and pulled out her gift.

It was a black hoodie, large in size though Jane was easily slighter than medium-sized, double fabric'ed and double-stitched for warmth, volume, and durability. There was no zipper in the front, and the joey pouch was large enough not only to put both her hands in, but extra things as well. The sleeves were too long, just so they could scrunch up at the wrists, and the hood was volumous, able to doff not only over the head, but able to drap over the eyes like the bill of a hat for shade from the sun or even to help disguise your identity for a few moments. The hoodie itself was of very good quality, made of a fabric that was both durable and stain-resistant, and it alone cost me a hundred and twenty dollars for what was generally considered a working man's hoodie; take a lickin' and keep on tickin'. The hoodie wasn't the only gift though, as the custom shop had been a print shop that specialized in graphics and decals for shirts and sweaters. I had taken the hoodie there with a sheet of paper with the designs in mind drawn on it, as well as the locations of the designs. The first had been the badge of 'N7' with a red corner on the lower right hand side, placed above the heart. The second had been a band of red that ran vertically down right arm, an inch and a half wide, with two half-inch silver borders on each side, going from neckline to wrist-cuff down the right arm. The last had been the design of the United States Army Special Forces group, known as the Green Berets; a vertical V-42 dagger with two crossed arrows behind it surrounded by a black banner lined in silver with the words ' _De Oppresso Liber_ ' in the banner, Latin for 'To Free The Oppressed'.

Jane held the hoodie in both hands, opened up so she could look at the front without wrinkles or folds, and then the back, and then the sleeve.

"Jersey..." The redhead's voice was weak for a moment, and I could see her green eyes shimmering as she looked at the hoodie with her jaw dropped. "...it's _perfect_! How... how'd you know?"

"You lamented more than a few times about it, and you described it to me once." I admitted sheepishly, shrugging my shoulders. "It sounded important to you, so I did my best to get you something as close to the original as possible. Which wasn't easy at all." That was a bit of an understatement, as Jane hadn't actually given me any actual critical details about her beloved hoodie that she had earned some five years before upon completing some qualification course that she claimed made the Ninja Warrior Mt. Midoriyama look like a grade-school playground. I wasn't sure if that was boasting or lamenting, but she had been bitter about losing what was obviously a prized point of pride and achievement on her part. I had to guess the font on the 'N7' portion, going for Cochin for its blocky lettering, and guessing the width of the band of red and silver bordering. I watched as Jane put it to her face and, surprisingly enough, smelled it, closing her eyes as she did so. The smile on her face was priceless as she thrusted it on over her torso, slipping her arms through the sleeves and, as I guessed, scrunched the sleeves to the wrists to where they billowed out with folds, just like she once mentioned.

"Jersey... this is amazing!" Jane gushed, pulling the torso of the hoodie down to her jeans, smiling. "It fits me just like my old one from the Villa! How..." Her smile disappeared as she tried figuring it out how I was able to afford it without a car or any real income. She connects the dots well enough by looking me over and spying something different about me. "You... what did you sell to afford this?" Her full lower lip pops out slightly in a pout, and it is completely adorable. She unfortunately has pegged my dilemma exactly, and figured me out completely.

"My 883." I reply sheepishly, and once again, I'm introduced to the sight of Jane's jaw dropping as she looks at me, flabbergasted. Probably should have told her that I sold my 1973 Harley Sportster just so I could get her a birthday present, especially since it was the last real thing of value I had. Jane looks at me dumbly, then at the hoodie she is now wearing, and then at me again. I can see the unasked question in her eyes. "It was just a bike, Jane. That meant something to you. Totally worth it, in my book." I'm not lying, seeing the smile on the redhead's face as she realized what her birthday present was had been incredible to watch. Seeing her now, hugging the very hoodie that she's wearing, it means something.

"Jersey... we should go." Jane looks at her strange holographic watch, frowns at the display, which is now less than one hundred seconds. "Finish your beer." She's standing up as I quaff the rest of my Guinness in record time, really gulping it as I move quickly off the bar stool to follow Jane as she strides to the exit of Rollies.

"Hey!" Lucy calls out from behind the bar as we leave, getting our attention as Jane goes to push open the door and I'm following in her footsteps. "You sure about this whole 'worlds' being evicted' thing?"

"Yep."

"This afternoon?" The older woman's biting her bottom lip.

"Less than two minutes." Jane checks her nifty holographic watch as it now counts down from the mid-80's. Lucy stands there, befuddled. It is obvious she isn't buying into the whole conversation, but she isn't discounting it, either.

"Well, is there anything we can do about it?" She asks. Jane thinks about this scenario for a full second.

"Put yourself down for a thousand Credits at the bookies for the Mariners today." The redhead replies as she pulls out another crumpled mass of dollar bills and slaps them onto the bar, giving Lucy what looks indeed to be a good deal of money. "Not that you'll be able to win it or spend it, but give yourself a last thrill before you go." Jane gives the older woman a charming smile. "I should go." She grabs me by the sleeve of my brown hoodie and pulls me away as we exit Rollies for what I didn't realize would be the last time.

* * *

The huge yellow machines began to sink downward and to move faster.

Jane knew they were there. This wasn't the way she had wanted it.

* * *

I found myself standing in the parking lot of Rollies, by the busy street intersection that was shared by three gas stations, a car wash, a quarry, some sandwich shop eatery, and a junk yard. It had gotten surprisingly dark for some ten thirty in the morning as I stepped onto old asphalt and the roar of traffic passed by both myself and Jane Shepard as she looks at her holographic watch again, her right hand lifting up the hoodie I'd given her to fiddle with a strange-looking fanny pack I had noticed her wearing earlier. I look up in the sky and see why it seems so dark now; there's something blocking the sun.

Something very large, something very yellow. Impossibly large. And impossibly yellow.

"Jane..." I can't believe what I am seeing as what appears to be a cube the size of Mt. Everest (because I can only compare to something of fathomable dimensions) tearing through skies and clouds in stark relief to everything else in existence, soaring through the atmosphere as gentle as a breeze and without any noise either, hovering in the sky as if it belonged. Like the worlds' largest yellow Lego block had come to squish us all. "What... the hell... is that!"

It's difficult to say exactly what the people on the surface of Earth were doing now, because, for the most part, they didn't really know what they were doing themselves from one minute to the next. None of it made a lot of sense; running into houses, running out of houses, howling noiselessly at the sight. All around the world city streets exploded with people, cars skidded into each other as the sight fell on them and then panic ensued. It was like a tidal wave of emotion that rolled over the entirety of the planet, made vocal by every mouth in every language.

Only one woman stood and watched the sky, stood with terrible sadness in her green eyes. She knew exactly was was happening had known since arriving on Earth just eight months, one week, and three days before; coincidentally, the same day she met Jersey. She had been dreading this moment for the entirety of her time on Earth as her Omnitool counted down Earths' final moments, a moment that had a coldness grip her and squeeze her heart. Of all the races in all of the Milky Way Galaxy who could have come and said a big hello to the planet Earth, she thought, it just had to be the Volus.

Still, she knew what she had to do. As the Volus Relocation Ships floated in the air high above her she opened her fanny pack. She chucked out the useless Earth knickknacks that would be of no use to her anymore; the wads of paper worth of such importance to Earth people, the Samsung Galaxy 5 phone she had hacked months ago for free service, and the cheap disposable cigarette lighter she had confiscated in case she needed to set something on fire. She wouldn't be needing those where she was going. Everything was ready, everything was prepared.

She finally had her hoodie back.

* * *

A sudden silence hit the Earth. It was the worse thing in the world. For a while nothing happened.

The great ships hung motionless in the sky, over every nation on Earth. Motionless they hung, huge, heavy, steady in the sky, a blasphemy against nature. Many people with straight into shock as their minds tried to encompass what they were looking at. The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks didn't.

And still nothing happened.

Then there was a slight whisper, a sudden spacious whisper of open ambient sound. Every wifi signal in the world, every radio, every television, every cell phone, every tablet, every site on the internet, every signal receiving device in the world quietly turned itself on.

Every tin can, every dustbin, every window, every car, every wineglass, every sheet of metal became activated as an acoustically perfect sounding board.

Before the Earth became evicted it was going to be treated to the very ultimate in sound production, the greatest public address system ever built. It was to be louder than a plane's take off, louder than a concert, louder than the screaming 12th Man fans of CenturyLink Field cheering on the Seahawks. But there was no concert, no music, no fanfare; just a simple message.

 _"(hwurk) Peoples of Earth-clan,_ _ _ _(hwurk)__ your attentions, please," _a voice said, and it was dignifying. Dignified, perfect quadraphonic sound with distortion levels so low as to make musical masters weep.

 _"_ _ _ _(hwurk)__ This is Edrin Elkoss of the Elkoss Combine, ____(hwurk)__ , who have won a bidding war ____(hwurk)__ against other rival companies ____(hwurk)__ for favor of the Galactic Citadel Counsel."_ The synthesized voice continued. _"As you are no doubt aware of,_ _ _ _(hwurk)__ the plans for development of the outlying regions of the Galaxy, ____(hwurk)__ require additional colonization for development and growth ____(hwurk)__ of less-fortunate persons in economic need ____(hwurk)__ and financial assistance. This planet, I regret to inform ____(hwurk)__ has been scheduled for terraformation and redevelopment purposes ____(hwurk)__ and the indigenous species occupying it ____(hwurk)__ have been slated for removal. The removal process ____(hwurk)_ _ will take slightly less than five of your Earth minutes. Thank you."_

The PA died away.

Uncomprehending terror settled on the watching people of Earth. The terror moved slowly through the gathering crowds as if they were iron filings on a sheet of board and a magnet was moving beneath them. Panic sprouted again, desperate fleeing panic, but there was nowhere to flee to.

Observing this, the voice turned on their PA again. It said:

 _"_ _ _ _(hwurk)__ There is no point ____(hwurk)__ in acting all surprised about it. ____(hwurk)__ The eviction notice was imprinted ____(hwurk)__ on your crops all over your planet ____(hwurk)__ for the past seventy-five Galactic Standard Years, ____(hwurk)__ so you've had plenty of time ____(hwurk)__ to work out travel arrangements and resettlement plans ____(hwurk)__ to your own desires. It is far too late ____(hwurk)__ to start making a fuss about it now."_

The PA fell silent again and its echo drifted off across the land. The huge ships turned slowly in the sky with easy power. On the underside of each a hatchway opened, an empty black square.

By this time somebody somewhere must have manned a radio transmitter, located a wavelength and broadcasted a message back to the ships, to plead on behalf of the planet. Nobody ever heard what they had to say, they only heard the reply. The PA slammed back into life again. The voice was annoyed. It said:

 _"What do you mean,_ _ _ _(hwurk)__ you didn't understand what 'crop circles' meant? ____(hwurk)__ By the Void, it was ease enough to understand ____(hwurk)__ if you assembled them all together ____(hwurk)__ in the proper fashion. I'm sorry, but if you can't understand and follow ____(hwurk)__ simple Voltine Pictoglyphs ____(hwurk)__ then that is on you._

 _"Energize the translation devices."_

Lights poured out of the hatchways from the terrible yellow floating machines.

 _"I don't know,"_ the voice said over the PA, breathing heavily, _"ignorant barbaric race. I've no sympathy at all."_ It cut off.

There was a terrible ghastly silence.

There was a terrible ghastly noise.

There was a terrible ghastly silence.

The Volus Relocation fleet coasted away into the inky starry void of outer space, with a world barren of multi-cellular creatures behind it.

* * *

A/N: hehehe, crop circles. Take that, M. Night Shamalayan!


End file.
